Kant and many philosophers after him understand a priori as beliefs ‘justifiable independent of experience’. This is also the common understanding of the analytic afterwards. However, Quine has an aversion to that. He holds that a priori should be understood as beliefs ‘unrevisable in the light of experience’. He says that it is more appropriate to describe a priori this way than
describing it in the light of ‘justifiable independent of experience’. Again, this feature, he observes, is also attributed to the analytic. Yet, he says that such way of describing a priori is wrong. He points out that if such description should be correct, then, the belief in a certain a priori truth or analytic truth is infallible. This is because, if it is so, people could in future be unwilling to revise such beliefs in the light of compelling alternative evidence. The fact is that, according to him, a belief said to be analytic could be justifiable independent of experience without actually being unrevisable in the light of experience. He maintains that if nothing could be unrevisable in the light of experience, then no truth could be said to exist without an appeal to experience. This means that there is nothing like the analytic since it is a notion that does not appeal to experience.
Endnotes
1. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. by P. Guyer and A.W. Wood, (Massachusetts: University Press, 1998) p.12
2. Loc. cit.
3. Rey Georges. “The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ….. http://plato.stanford.Edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/ (2015)
4. Loc. cit.
5. T. R. Brunnel, Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine.
(Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. Press, 2007) p.198.
6. Gilber Ryle, The Philosophy of W.V. Quine: An Expository Essay. (Tampa: University of South Florida, 2011) p. 26
7. Peter Hylton, Willard van Omarn Quine, (New York: Routledge, 2014) p. 48
8. Georges Rey, “Analytic-Synthetic Distinction” Stanford University Online Encyclopedia.
http://mally.stanford.Edu/ 1/12/2015
9. Willard van Orman Quine, “The Two Dogmas of Empiricism” From a Logical Point of View: 9 logico-philosophical essays. 2nd ed., revised. (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1980) p. 22 10. Georges ReyP.48
11. Brian Duignan, “Analytic-Synthetic Distinction”, Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. ebcid:com.britannica.oec2.identifier.authoridentifier?authorid=6469 2013
12. Carnap, R., The Logical Syntax of Language, (London : Kegan Paul 1973) P.52.
13. Willard van Orman Quine, Theories and Things (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981) p.21
14. Willard van Orman Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press 1960,) p.
276
15. Willard van Orman Quine, Roots of Reference, (La Salle, : Open Court. 1974) p. 174 16. Rudolf Carnap, R. "Autobiography". In Paul Arthur Schlipp, ed. The Philosophy of
Rudolf Carnap. (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. (1999).p. 64 http://www.scribd.com/doc62133298/the-philosophy-of-Rudolf-Carnap
17. Tom Obrien, analytic-synthetic distinction, https://www.mediawiki.org/ 23/3/2016 18. Loc. Cit.
19. Loc. Cit.
20. Katz J. Jerrold, "The Epistemic Challenge to Antirealism". Realistic Rationalism.
(Chicago: MIT Press, 2000) p. 69.
21. Gary Ebbs, “A First Sketch of the Pragmatic Roots of Carnap's Analytic-Synthetic Distinction," Rule-Following and Realism, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009) P. 101
22. David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996) p.48
23. Rudolf Carnap "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology". Revue Internationale de Philosophie Reprinted in the Supplement to Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, enlarged edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956). Pp.
20–40 24. Ibid.
25. Stephen Yablo "Does Ontology Rest Upon a Mistake?" Aristotelian Society Supplementary http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/ (2013)
26. Georges Rey, "The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ (2012)
27. Loc. Cit.
28. Loc. Cit.
29. Peter Hylton, Willard van Omarn Quine (New York: Routledge, 2014) p.22 30. Georges Rey, P.322
31. W.v. Quine,. A logistical Approach to the ontological problem’. The ways of paradox (Cambridge: Harvard University Press.1976) P.198)
32. Carnap, R., Philosophical Foundations of Physics, Basic Books, New York. 1966 P. 37).
33. Ibid.
CHAPTER FOUR
QUINE’S REASONS FOR REJECTING ANALYTIC-SYNTHETIC DISTINCTION 4. 1. Quine on definition, explication and synonymy
Quine’s rejection of analyticity began with his examination of the concept of definition. The first step he took in this direction is to examine attempts of philosophers to define analyticity or explain necessity and the a priori with analyticity. He holds that those definitions do not live up to the standards of clarity, rigour and metaphysical austerity. He then proffered his own dentitions which he also says are deficient. He first defined analyticity in relation to synonymy in these words “a claim is analytic if it may be transformed into logical truths by substituting synonyms for synonyms”1 His argument against this definition is that it presupposes that we already know what synonym means. He holds it would be difficult to define synonym and such definition if at all possible could be of three kinds, namely, lexigraphical definitions, explications and abbreviations. However, after faulting those kinds of definitions, he proposed the abandonment of definitions in favour of explaining synonym with reference to necessity. It is in view of this that he defined synonym holding that “two expressions are synonymous if they may be substituted for each other in a sentence beginning ‘necessarily’ without change of truth-value.
Again, he rejected this definition based on the fact that it shows that we have made sense of
‘necessarily’, made satisfactory sense of ‘analytic’.2 Quine’s notion that making sense of
‘necessarily’ presupposes making sense of ‘analytic’ is in response to the then doctrine of Necessary Truth of the positivists who posited that a sentence is meaningful only when it could be verified or falsified empirically; that is, with reference to experience. Yet, they admitted that mathematical and logical sentences cannot be verified or falsified with empirical data. They are
said to be necessarily true because they cannot be possibly negated or disconfirmed with empirical data. This is summed up in the following words:
… claims of arithmetic and logic are analytic, or true in virtue of their meanings alone. This explains both their necessity and our knowledge of it;
if a sentence is true in virtue of its meanings alone, then it doesn’t matter what the world is like the sentence will still be true –hence it is necessary.
And if it is true in virtue of what it means, and (as we’ll assume for argument’s sake) speakers are acquainted with the meanings of the expressions they use, then they are likely to be able to work out that the sentence has got to be true without experiencing of the world. Hence the widespread belief amongst empiricists of the time: what it is to say that a truth is necessary is to say that it is analytic.3
In relating definitions to synonymy, Quine suggests that there could be appeal to definitions when one wants to give explanation to synonymy. An example is: ‘rational animal’ could be seen as the definition of ‘man’. He maintains that synonymy is actually involved in every definition except in a situation where a word is abbreviated. What this means is that the only case in which definitions do not presuppose synonymy is when an abbreviation is ascribed to a word by pure convention. In such case, the word cannot be said to be synonymous to the abbreviation. For an instance, Ai is said to be the abbreviation of Abakaliki. It would be wrong to say that Ai is synonymous to Abakaliki. Quine concludes that definitions rest on synonymy rather than explaining it. The result of this is that definition does not properly explain the meaning of a concept.
The words used by Quine on synonymy is ‘interchangeability’. He holds that words are synonymous when, in all contexts, they could be said to be ‘interchangeable’. Yet, he was quick to observe that the word interchangeability is a broad word and cannot be used to demonstrate synonymy. His reason is that even if two words have similar truth values and could be substituted for one another, they have different significance in terms of holistic account of
experience and would be of different relevance in the consideration of the interrelated network or spectrum of revisable statements. What this means is that the degree or possibility of their revisability would be different; they cannot be the same in all possible ways. To demonstrate this, he gave an instance with the statement: ‘bachelors are unmarried man’. He says that if synonyms are said to be interchangeable in all contexts without the change of truth value, then,
‘unmarried men’ and ‘bachelors’ which have different number of letters and words cannot be interchangeable in all contexts. He also asks if the word ‘bachelor’ as the subject of the statement ‘bachelors are unmarried men’ can also replace the same word in such phrase as
‘bachelors of arts’. However, he admits that one can overcome the last problem by saying that the term in ‘bachelor of arts’ is a complete word whose meaning is different from the earlier statement.
One major area that Quine identifies the problem of synonymy concerns his account of what he termed ‘cognitive synonymy’. He says that cognitive synonymy is the case in which analytic truth could be turned into logical truth by means of putting synonyms for synonyms. For instance, the statement ‘men are rational animals’ could be turned into such logical truth as ‘no non-rational animals are rational animals’. Now, Quine says that for one to explain ‘cognitive synonymy’ contained in the presumed analytic statements, there should be the assumption that one knows what analyticity means, that is, that it is a necessary truth. What this means is that one cannot think of replacing ‘bachelors’ with ‘unmarried men’ without presupposing that the statement ‘bachelors are unmarried men’ is a necessary truth, that is, analytic truth.. Again, Quine asks the question of whether it is possible to give an account of cognitive synonymy by means of appealing to interchangeability without our minds on analyticity. Here Quine says that it is not possible. He then thought of a way of making such expression without one’s mind on
analytic. With this in mind he gave an example with an expression like: ‘necessarily all and only bachelors are unmarried men’. Here he says that this does not appeal to definition or synonymy but simply to the meaning of the words and with the consideration that the statement ‘bachelors are unmarried men’ which comes from a natural language is turned to ‘necessarily all and only bachelors are unmarried men’. Here, the word ‘necessary’ still makes it analytically or logically true. What this means is that, once again, one presupposes the notion of analyticity or the necessary to come to terms with the analytic or define cognitive synonymy.
Quine divides analytic truths into two, namely, logical truths which he calls ‘analytic statements of the first class’ and other analytic truths that are not logical truths which he calls ‘analytic truths of the second class’. He then says that the first form of analytic truths (logical truths) are not problematic. To him, where the problem lies is when it has to do with the analytic truths of the second class. It is in view of this that he states that the problem of the defining of analyticity is actually the problem of explaining what it takes to be analytic truth that is not of the first class.
Here he says that for one to explain analyticity without reference to the notion of necessity and apriority, one has to explain in clear terms the concept of synonymy and definition.
On the relation of logical truths to other analytic truths, Quine posits that one can explain synonymy in terms of a definition. He writes:
There are those who find it soothing to say that the analytic statements of the second class reduce to those of the first class, the logical truths, by definition: ‘bachelor’, for example, is defined as ‘unmarried man.’… who defined it thus, and when? Are we to appeal to the nearest dictionary…?
Clearly, this would be to put the cart before the horse. The lexicographer is an empirical scientist, whose business is the recording to antecedent facts; and if he glosses ‘bachelor’ as ‘unmarried man’ it is because we of his belief that there is a relation of synonymy between those r forms…
prior to his own work.4
Quine posits out that it is difficult to rest the meaning of analyticity on definitions and synonymy considering that the two (definitions and synonymy) are problematic/obscure. He first observed that to have the definition of a concept, we turn to a lexicographer’s account of the concept in a dictionary which we take as law. Quine observes that this would be to put the cart before the horse. The reason is that the lexicographer himself is an empiricist scientist whose duty is to record antecedent facts. Now, if the lexicographer should define a bachelor with the phrase
“unmarried man” the reason for this is that he believes that there is a relationship of synonymy between the term “bachelor,” and the phrase “unmarried man”. Quine states that the lexicographer’s belief in this “relationship rests on the meaning of such word or concept among its users”.5 He then concludes: “The notion of synonymy presupposed here has still to be clarified, presumably in terms relating to linguistic behavior. Certainly the "definition" which is the lexicographer's report of an observed synonymy cannot be taken as the ground of the synonymy.” 6
Quine also observes that synonymy itself is obscure while the connection that appears between two synonyms are only matters of convention and the definitions taken to give that account of synonymy report nothing but how they are being used. He writes
Just what it means to affirm synonymy, just what the interconnections may be which are necessary and sufficient in order that two linguistic forms be properly describable as synonymous, is far from clear; but, whatever these interconnections may be, ordinarily they are grounded in usage.
Definitions reporting selected instances of synonymy come then as reports upon usage.7
Having rejected definition, Quine turned to explication which he says is a higher version of it. He observed that the purpose of the explication of a concept or terms is not just to paraphrase the defeniendum into an outright synonymy, but to add more information to the definiendum by
refining or supplementing its meaning. He holds that the function of explication is to preserve the favoured contexts of a word to be explicated and sharpen the usage of other contexts so as to make the favoured contexts of the definiendum taken as a whole to be “synonymous with the corresponding context of the definiens. But Quine has problem with this. He then rejects explication in the following words:
Two alternative definientia may be equally appropriate for the purposes of a given task of explication and yet not be synonymous with each other; for they may serve interchangeably within the favored contexts but diverge elsewhere. By cleaving to one of these definientia rather than the other, a definition of explicative kind generates, by fiat, a relationship of synonymy between definiendum and definiens which did not hold before.
But such a definition still owes its explicative function, as seen, to pre-existing synonymies.8
Quine, discovering that explication does not resolve the issue on ground, resorted to what he termed extreme sort of definition which he says does not depend on prior synonymies. He explained this form of definition and made this conclusion contained it in the follows words:
There does, however, remain still an extreme sort of definition which does not hark back to prior synonymies at all; namely, the explicitly conventional introduction of novel notations for purposes of sheer abbreviation. Here the definiendum becomes synonymous with the definiens simply because it has been created expressly for the purpose of being synonymous with the definiens. Here we have a really transparent case of synonymy created by definition; would that all species of synonymy were as intelligible. For the rest, definition rests on synonymy rather than explaining it. 9
After his analysis of definition and explication, he abandoned definition on the basis that
“…notation of definition does not hold the key to synonymy and analyticity”10 He then turned to the role of definition in formal work. He holds that it is wrong to have definition built on synonymy since the synonym of the word being defined is already in use. But then, he turned to expressions in logical and mathematical systems. In both systems, Quine holds that we can either
strive after the economy of practical expression which calls for easy and brevity in the statement of multifarious relationship or on the contrary, economy in grammar and vocabulary which calls for looking for a minimum of basic concepts. He then says that though both economies are incompatible, there is the custom among scholars to continue both or utilize their separate benefits to form a notation built on two languages. The result is that:
The definiens may be a faithful paraphrase of the definiendum into the narrower notation, preserving a direct synonymy as of antecedent usage;
or the definiens may, in the spirit of explication, improve upon the antecedent usage of the definiendum; or finally, the definiendum may be a newly created notation, newly endowed with meaning here and now. 11
Quine’s view on synonymy, as I observed above, begins with his postulation that synonyms should have a type of interchangeability in all contexts without there being any change in their truth value. Such interchangeability, Quine observes, is such that is expressed by leibniz salva veritate. He writes: “a natural suggestion, deserving close examination, is that the synonymy of two linguistic forms consists simply in their interchangeability in all contexts without change of truth value –interchangeability, in Leibniz’s phrase, salva veritate.”12 Here he observes that the synonyms “bachelor” and “unmarried man” and other similar synonyms are not interchangeable salva veritate. He observes that the usage of ‘bachelor’ as could be seen in ‘bachelor of art’, or
‘bachelor’s buttons’, and ‘bachelor is an unmarried man’ do not even mean the same thing. He says that even chargeability salva veritate has the weakness of a “drawback of appealing to a prior conception of word; which can be counted on to present difficulties of formation in its turn13 Quine also observes that he was not after such synonymy that is too perfect in these words;
“a synonymy in that sense of complete identity in psychological associations or perfect quality.
“14 He was of the opinion that no two expressions are synonymous in that regard. He then turned again to cognitive synonymy with the hope of finding meaning in analytic statements.
Cognitive synonymy, in the account of Quine and as I have stated above, is such that it would be possible to turn any analytic statement into logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms. He analyzed the situation and presumed initially that cognitive synonymy does not presuppose analyticity. He recognizes the fact that interchangeability salva veritate is sufficient condition for cognitive synonymy. He says that to turn “all bachelors are unmarried men” into cognitive synonymy we write “necessarily all and only bachelors are bachelors”. This, he says, “… is evidently true, even supposing 'necessarily' so narrowly construed as to be truly applicable only to analytic statements. Then, if 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' are interchangeable salva veritate, the result: Necessarily, all and only bachelors are unmarried men” 15 should be presumed analytic statement. Yet, he maintains that this is not so and observes that the type of language that supports interchangeability salva veritate is an extensional language. Yet, he says that extensional language cannot give cognitive synonymy what is desired. He writes
For most purposes extensional agreement is the nearest approximation to synonymy we need care about. But the fact remains that extensional agreement falls far short of cognitive synonymy of the type required for explaining analyticity in the manner of Section I. The type of cognitive synonymy required there is such as to equate the synonymy of 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' with the analyticity of (3), not merely with the truth of16
Quine says that for an extensional language to have interchangeability that could have sufficient condition of cognitive synonymy needed for analyticity, adverbs like “necessarily” must be there. Yet, he observes, if that adverb is there, then it is taken for granted that “the notion of analyticity is already clearly understood in advance.”17 However, all said and done, Quine concludes that synonymy does not give good account of analyticity.
Quine also suggested that for one to understand what it means for two concepts or expressions to be synonymous, one need not take recourse to the suggestions of a lexicographer concerning the